From HuffPo/Pollster:
HuffPost Model Estimate
Charlie Baker 45.5%
Martha Coakley 44.6%
Undecided 9.9%
CONFIDENCE OF WIN The probability that Baker will beat Coakley is 51%.
Please share widely!
Wonk Post: MA Governor Polling Aggregate
October 24–28, 20xx 47% 47%
October 11–13, 20xx 35% 42%
November 1–3, 20xx 49% 49%
October 29 – November 1, 20xx 47% 45%
October 24–28, 2012 47% 47% (Warren v Brown)
October 11–13, 2010 35% 42% (Patrick v Baker)
November 1–3, 2012 49% 49% (Obama v Romney)
October 29 – November 1, 2008 47% 45% (Obama v McCain)
…why the downrates for providing information?
I down rated because I believe (not positive because of no source) it’s comparing individual polls picked to show extremes to devalue a poll aggregator. One poll instead of an aggregate had Romney thinking he was in a dead heat with Obama when he wasn’t and one poll doesn’t mean baker is actually up by 9. There is a great and necessary point to be made that polls are a snapshot, often biased and not determinate but I thought the listing of these 4 to be poor mathematics.
Coakley was never behind Baker by 7 points like Patrick was in one of those polls.
According to the new Globe poll tonight.
If this is remotely true…It’s the fault of the party for not shutting the fuck up and getting behind the nominee
Save the circular firing squad until after the election.
Being covertly in Baker’s pocket. That’s how it seems to me. Coakley has won the last two debates yet the media is out there giving Baker a pass.
Are you seriously suggesting that BMG is “covertly in Baker’s pocket”?
sorry but You guys have not shown nearly the enthusiasm towards Coakley as you did towards Patrick and Warren.
n/t
That’s a new one.
From Globe poll analysis…with Baker up 9 points…
“Among independents, Baker has nearly triple the support that Coakley has, 57 percent to 20 percent. In mid-September, when Coakley had an overall lead of 39 percent to 36 percent, Baker had secured 43 percent of the independent vote, to Coakley’s 24 percent.
Coakley maintains a healthy lead among Democrats, 74 percent to 13 percent. But her advantage among women is down to 4 points, after an 11-point margin last week. Men support Baker by a split of 55 percent to 30 percent.”
When you are courting Independent voters, you don’t bring in Beltway celebs/pols to win them over down the stretch…that just underscores Baker’s argument that Coakley is in fact a Dem insider and a GOP in the Gov seat would help balance the govt. (It did not work for her in the Senate race, and it doesn’t seem to be doing the trick this time either)
Who’s opinion do independents value, listen to? That’s the pertinent question. Maybe it is the Mayors they helped elect locally…or School Committee members or city councilors…or Little League coaches…who ever it is…they are the endorsements that count more with independents. A lot of work to do in just over a week!
One thing I know for sure. “Women’s issues” are pocketbook issues when push comes to shove…how to pay the bills.
I also think women don’t like supporting other women. That’s why Shannon O’brien lost in 2002.
That’s a good one as well.
I haven’t gone into the weeds with the crosstabs from the just-released Globe poll, but these excerpts from yesterday’s David Bernstein column in Boston Magazine are instructive:
It looks like Coakley’s problem can be summed up as sufficient Democrats breaking towards Baker to give him an edge which is now outside the margins of error of (at least) the Globe poll.
This:
http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2014/10/21/charlie-baker-struggles-martha-coakley-finds-her-zone/2M3KelvXSXhmchXDUmsvMJ/story.html
…and I don’t mean that ideologically.
For more reasons than I care to go into at present, the Globe is mediocre at political reporting.
The Democratic problem is structural. Simply put Coakley has a crappy field operation. This is not necessarily her fault as a candidate; the field vacuum on the Democratic side is Statewide, as is the indifference of most Democratic elected officials.
Coakley ran an essentially passive-aggressive campaign in the primaries, correctly presuming that the incompetence (approaching political malpractice) on the part of the Berwick and Grossman campaigns would give her the nomination by default.
Given her consistently high negatives it’s not surprising that competent (not great, just competent) campaigning by Baker would result in momentum on his behalf.
Have no business winning if Coakley doesn’t win. Only a schizophrenic would vote for Healy while voting for Baker.
n/t
Is clearly trumped up..Please explain what more Coakley can do..She’s been outperforming Baker by every objective metric.
And the vote two weeks from now…
She can run a marginally competent campaign.
More importantly, Baker has ran a crap fest of a campaign yet he gets a pass.
…and took her base for granted. If you want folks to vote for you, you gotta ask them for your vote.
…and, having asked, it never hurts to organize them on your behalf.
As I said, passive-aggressive.
I have the equivalent of two overlapping focus groups: players and civilians, all on my Massachusetts Supervoter list. For months I’ve asked them “What are you hearing from the campaigns?”, by which I mean mailers,lit, and political buzz by neighbors colleagues, and friends – phone banks and emails don’t count, because they are considered (at best) nuisances by recipients.
For eleven months, nada.
In the primary…It’s not like she was forced on you the way Baker was forced on the GOP base by the party elites.
I’m not suggesting that Coakley was “forced” on me – or any other Democrat.
I’m just saying that her campaign staff couldn’t organize a bottle party in a brewery.
I think that the race is still tight, and Coakley could still pull it off; but her campaign staff are so dense they bend light.
Coakley gets a disproportionate amount of flack for her flaws while Baker for whatever reason gets a pass for the untold number of flaws he has.
My community looks just like it does every gubernatorial election. The candidate has made the same number of local stops, the Democratic Committee has the same combined campaign, yadda yadda. Maybe my community is the outlier in this regard, but I don’t see any evidence that the Coakley’s ground game is any weaker than Patrick’s.
The enthusiasm may be different, but that’s not really a ground game issue. The Coakley team has the “equipment” in place.
She’s running a great campaign compared to Baker..The problem is the media and elements of this site have this covert bias towards Baker. There’s no other way to explain the pass Baker gets for
– Calling that woman reporter Sweet heart
– trying to evade taking a stance on issues
– The General Catalyst scandal
And, I will save the details for later. But, you are dead wrong. As suggested above we can do the circular firing squad later, if necessary. I’m still hoping that she can pull this out and I will do what I can for her. But, her campaign is anything but “good,” and it starts with the candidate. No question, she’s got some headwinds — but this is still Massachusetts so she should be able to create more wind at her back, as well. Go Martha, GO!
I really think the idea that “we” aren’t working “hard enough”-which I heard after the 2010 special as well (I called or emailed 20 or 25 friends from Chicago for Martha!), is a bit bunk. As is the turnout model if we compare this to 2010 when MA was a significant bulwark against the Red Tide.
It’s unlikely any other statewide Republicans will win or that Keating or Moulton will lose (but they still need our votes, our money, and our time!). It is more likely than not at this point that Coakley will lose, and it is her loss that will be the outlier. And it won’t be because too many of us sat on our hands.
Her online supporters could avoid telling people to F themselves, or calling voters who vote for other Democratic candidates but not her “schizophrenic.”
They could also avoid accusing the media (reporters for which occasionally read this thing) of shilling for the opposition, absent any evidence.
Small steps, I know. By the way nearly all of us are voting for Coakley. Many have volunteered, many have donated, etc.
Deep breaths, as Judy would say. 12 days to go.
By the stupidity in this state…
Maybe this is all old news and obvious stuff to you guys, but I don’t get as deeply involved in the mechanics of the campaigns.
I am surprised that you think there are issues with the field operation. I was under the impression that this was a big strength and a huge factor in both of Patrick’s wins.
How does that just disappear? Are all of those people simply motivated by the individual candidate, and decided to sit this one out? Or is it just that there are different people managing the campaign, and different managers have different philosophies? (Like, say, emphasizing working the count for walks and driving the pitcher’s pitch count up, vs. aggressive swinging, bunting, and stealing).
…and Obama has the same problem, which is why we may just well lose the Senate.
Specific to Patrick in 2006 and 2010, it must be remembered that the Governor’s pre-Convention field plan amounted to creating an insurgency at the caucuses, knocking off Convention regulars (who were, by and large Reilly supporters), wiring the Convention, and using the Convention victory to establish inevitability with the players, the media, and the electorate (in that order).
Pursuant to that, Patrick’s people recruited almost every credible shoe-leather activist to work as paid staff on his campaign.
Coakley’s campaign, on the other hand, is over-targeting supporters, and ignoring the broader electorate (at least in the cities), with foreseeable results. In addition her campaign consistently snubbed both credible grassroots players and elected officials. Re: the latter, Coakley is trying to play catch-up, but it’s difficult to compress work that should have started on September 10 into a week and a half. “Unity breakfasts” do not equate to combined campaigning.
There were other matters in ’06, such as Tom Menino convincing Reilly to purge Chris Gabrieli as his running mate, thus creating an enemy for Reilly with deep pockets, but the abandonment of active engagement with grassroots voters (who are not always synonymous with “activists”) is the issue at hand now.
For what it’s worth I can cite other examples over the past two years on the part of other campaigns…
.
it’s about the syncing up of the many field operations of local organizations and candidates, rather than a massively orchestrated from the top activity. So you’re out for a state rep but you carry Coakley materials, for example. Or in an uncontested seat the state rep’s crew works for statewide candidates in their districts. That’s how it works on the Republican side- state campaign HQ has coordinators who create a list of local go-to people and they reach out to the their local organizations. For the R’s this is mostly the RTC’s.
The postmortem (which I got from reading) on January 2010 was that Coakley’s HQ team never bothered to contact those local go-to people and so they were not activated in anyway to get out the local help, and therefore the local vote.
I think what I hear now is there is some of that currently, but that’s only from this blog.
If there’s more to add to that, feel free to jump in.
n/t
I think it’s worth adding that both Deval and Obama drew people to politics that had never gone anywhere near it. They were inspired, they worked hard … but they were done when those guys were done.
Those people are so rational. It must be nice to be like them.
Both had armies of activists at their disposal who could have lit up Beacon/Capitol Hill switchboards on their behalf to lobby for their legislative programs, but as far as I can tell they never marshalled us.
Nobody had an operation approaching the Patrick one in 2005-2006 executed so well by John Walsh and Nancy Stolberg. Grossman himself did better running for Treasurer than he did running for Governor. It showed in both cases.
(Disclosure: I tried to get a job as a statewide field director for candidates I supported starting at the 2013 convention. Nobody was ready to address that for several months and some didn’t have field directors by caucuses. By contrast I believe Nancy Stolberg was hired by the Patrick campaign in the spring of 2005.)
I’ll give you a call around 2030. We disagree in some stuff, but you are a dedicated trooper in our party and would be a good fit for any team with your experience and training.
Speaker Finneran held off on supporting him until the last minute, and kept his troops on the sidelines, too. It was the difference between a win and a loss. Where is Speaker DeLeo? Is this payback for something she did as AG?
n/t
Coakely has made it quite clear that she is willing to kiss the Speaker’s a… I mean work collegially with Mr DeLeo for the betterment for all the residents of the Commonwealth.
Don’t shoot the messenger. I’ve been saying for months on here that I would support her after the primary and I have. I’ve given $, raised $, and talked her up constantly and recruited people to work on her campaign. But saying that I’m in Baker’s pocket and telling me to *&^% myself because I relayed the Globe poll is over the top.
In the race, exactly 24 years ago from tomorrow and we all know how that turned out.
http://articles.latimes.com/1990-10-24/news/mn-2968_1_large-tax-increases
I am not expecting to see Martha attack Natalie Jacobson.
For those who don’t remember the turning point in the 1990 campaign, the Jacobson-Silber interview is here.
Hopefully, it’s the next debate.
This completely ignores the 10% of undecideds who are predominantly younger dems.
But it ain’t over until it’s over. Give ’em hell, Martha!
There are three other candidates in this race that probably add up at least to the 10% “undecided”. Did these polls just ask Baker or Coakley? Without getting much into how that would make them pro-Baker AND pro-Coakley push polls, this at least makes “undecided” a very nebulous concept. Lumping the other candidates under “other” would still be unfair to them, but would at least be more useful for figuring out how close the Baker vs. Coakley race actually is. As presented, I could very well interpret these numbers to mean 4.24% Baker 4.25% Coakley 40% Falchuk 30% McCormick 20% Lively 1% undecided.
(OK so most of the individual polls do include the others at around 6% total but the aggregate is still deceiving)
Since the numbers in the huffpo chart only add to 95.3 (see above) the remaining 4.7% ought to be the firm ‘others’. But that’s not to say one of the 10.4% undecideds could break their way…
So there is an 10.4 + 4.7 = 15.1 ‘un-accounted for’ percentage.
…that I linked to in the post.
On that site are likes to the individual polls’ marginals and crosstabs. In addition the graphic at HuffPo/Pollster is interactive, and can give information by source poll/point in time.
n/t
I agree. But, of course it’s the grassroots fault. Way to rally the troops.
Together because Baker will eliminate your job.
Oh my god. You are not suggesting Martha Coakley’s job would be eliminated?
where I don’t criticize someone for something they haven’t done yet. The election is 11 days out, Martha Coakley has not lost anything yet. While it concerns me that she seems to have difficulty against credible opponents, I feel like the Globe poll is a bit of an outlier. This is still a very close race and while at the moment the momentum is on Baker’s side 11 days is a lifetime.
Mostly because there’s no ryme or reason behind the numbers..After the last debate, I was convinced, Coakley would be in the driver’s seat with the next poll. Baker just looked awful in that last debate. My theory of a pro Baker media bias still stands.
…that the poll respondents watched the debate(s). Was that in the questions asked? A whole lot of people don’t watch.
what else happened in the last few days that would drive such a swing?
I’m hoping they don’t bother voting as they’re like most of Baker’s margin with indys
Good grief, massive understatement alert. Brown was not “credible” until Martha got a hold of him. She very well may make a wonderful governor but she is a poor politician. If she wins it is another testament to the blueness of the electorate.